


Jolly Holiday

by Lex_Munro



Series: Stories From the Fateverse [24]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6819154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lex_Munro/pseuds/Lex_Munro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hope, still new to her job as Auditor of the F-473 Network, steps foot inside a big blue box.  She honestly wasn't planning on a jailbreak today, but the Doctors' TARDISes have a habit of kidnapping people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just in Case

**Author's Note:**

> I wavered for a long time on whether to promote this set from scrap status; the twisty little problem Hope and the Founder run off to solve came from an orphaned round robin fic. All you need to know about the round robin fic is that two universes physically collided, this is a Not Good Thing, and it is a matter of panicked 'okay, how do we fix this without breaking all of existence?' shenanigans from the Network.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there's a key, there must be a door! Obviously, when a big blue box appears out of nowhere, you should get in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auditor!Hope, being the credulous (somewhat gullible, in fact) person she is, presses the ‘just in case’ entry on Wade’s gravitic constructor pad, finds a little key to a big blue box, and gets abducted in fine Doctor Who fashion.
> 
> i have no idea what kind of control room the Founder's TARDIS is rocking, but i imagine it’s like a cross between Eleven’s control room and the junk-TARDIS–shiny and new-feeling, but also somewhat MacGyvered out of other things (like that Timey-Wimey detector in Blink). i imagine he added a cup-holder somewhere along the line (not that that matters; i just thought it might help to have a mental image of a cup-holder somewhere on or about the controls…maybe he even left a cup of tea there, ew).
> 
> *for American readers, when a Brit (or British-sounding Time Lord) says 'biscuits,’ he means 'cookies.’

**Just in Case**

 

This is Hope’s first time at the Core.  It seems strange to see so much sky and sea and green.  Sure, she’s been to coastal cities on vacation, she’s been to pollution-free countrysides for work, she’s walked in gardens and parks and arboretums (or arboreta, whatever), but none of those places had all of it at once.

Nano-scrubbed air and chemical-waste-free ocean and genetically engineered plants.  All the buildings on the island are greyscale and vertical, and the road- and railways look like ribbons frozen in midair.

Overall, it makes her feel like she should keep her breathing shallow and try not to touch anything, just in case they’ve got some kind of system that tracks who’s responsible for contaminating their nice shiny city-state.  It’d be pretty embarrassing to get chucked in the brig for littering by dint of her very presence.  They’d probably look at her the way stodgy old neat freaks look at people who track dirt into the house.

Currently, she’s waiting.

She’s here for her first official FSED session, but the Proctor they gave her was a version of herself, and she just couldn’t get over how _weird_ it felt to sit at a table together.  The older woman had frowned grumpily in a way that made terrible wrinkles, and then she’d typed something into her portable and said a different Proctor would be along to administer her initial diagnostic.  So she’s waiting.

The other Hope left.  Tack ‘alone’ onto the end of that.

Hope is waiting _alone_.

In a room with blank walls, one door, and an unjustifiably high ceiling that makes it feel like a very large coffin.

The coffin-room is blank off-white, like many things in the Core, and the table and chairs are made from some kind of matte white material that holds ambient heat.  She wonders if there’s a hidden security camera somewhere.

“Ookie-dookie,” she says, pattering a rhythm on the table with her hands.  “Yep.  Just waitin’.  Chillaxin’.  Do you guys know that word?  Gotta admit, I haven’t really met a lotta Core natives.”

Only silence answers.

“So, there’s this intcol that I’ve been wondering what we’re gonna do with.  The Head Analyst—Tom, I mean—said there’s nothing we can do directly, but I can’t take just sitting on my hands, you know?”

She huffs a sigh.  “Awesome, Hope, you’re talking to yourself.  The Wades would mock you endlessly…”

The silence and blankness are almost oppressive.  Maybe that’s the point?

She stands and paces a circle around the room’s perimeter.

When she gets back to her chair, there’s a large blue booth across the room from her.

“Hell-looooo,” she mumbles.  “Where’d you come from?  And what the heck is a ‘police public call box’?”

She tries the door; it’s locked.

Wade’s GCP beeps on her hip; when she checks it, the number two entry is blinking.

_Just in case._

“Just in case of what?” she asks, pressing the ‘accept’ button.

With a hum, the pad drops a little metal key into her hand.

“No way.”

She looks from the key to the door of the blue box and back.

Naturally, she tries the key in the lock.  It turns easily, so she pulls the handle (the sign on the door says ‘pull to open,’ after all) and pokes her head inside.

“No. _Way._ ”

On the other side of the door is not the inside of a seven-ish-by-three-by-three box.

It can’t be a gravitic conduit…maybe dimensional compression of some kind?  No, she would’ve felt it.

Just to be sure, she goes back out and walks all the way around the box—from the outside, it’s just a box.

But _inside_ …

“It’s bigger on the inside,” she says to no one in particular.

Well, she was raised by Wade; she’s _got_ to be nosy now.

She takes the key and closes the door behind her.

A dim golden glow reveals some kind of control room with a set of panels around a central pillar.  There are all sorts of strange buttons and levers and dials, like some enterprising antique-collector decided to throw everything together into some bizarre piece of modern art.  One of the six control panels has a big red button in the middle.

“Don’t do it, Hope,” she mutters.  “Resist.  _Resist._   What if the weird little circles under it are some kind of alien writing and it clearly says ‘push to end world’?”

She resists for exactly four seconds, then slams her hand down on the button and squeezes her eyes shut.

The room gives a brief lurch, lights twinkling on the consoles and some sort of bubble fixture moving within the central pillar like the piston of a very weird engine.  After a moment, the lights on the consoles wink out, and the door creaks open.

A man peers in.  “I thought I told you to _stay_.”  He blinks when he sees Hope.  “Hullo.  What are you doing in my TARDIS?  That’s a turn for the books, her being the one picking up strays for once…”

“What’s a tardis?” Hope asks.

“It stands for—nevermind, it’s a time machine.”

“It’s bigger on the inside.”

He beams.  “Love it when they say that.”

“Why did Wade’s GCP have a key to your time machine in it?”

“Just in case,” he says.

“Just in case of what?” she asks again.

“So she’s brought you here, to me, because you inherited the key, but why would she come here, why would she come fetch me—unless, _unless_ —there’s something wrong that other people can’t fix because other people aren’t me, which means either there’s a critical locus fault that requires my unique expertise, or there’s an intrusive collision that only she could break into without tearing a big nasty hole right through all of Time.”

Hope very nearly understands.  “Your time machine’s a she?”

“How can you ask that?  Of course she’s a she, she’s a _ship_ , ships are _shes_.”

“Sorry.  Who are you?”

“Ooh, you show up in my TARDIS with the Auditor’s constructor and you don’t know who I am, now _that_ is fascinating.”

He bounds over to her and leans far too close for politeness’ sake.

He has silver flecks in his eyes.

“I’m the Doctor,” he says.  “And you are the Auditor.  The new one.  Never made it down to the end of the corridor, eh?”

“You don’t look like the Doctors we have in min-sec,” she manages, leaning away.

“Not many of us live to be my age, and we don’t always share faces.  How can you have become Auditor without knowing Inmate 001?  I’m practically the reason the Fridge was built.  Literally, for all intents and purposes, in several interpretations of the wording, the _reason_ it was built.  Everyone else there knows me, I’m sure.  Mr. Carter’s daughter brings me home-made biscuits.  From scratch, not synthesised, she’s a real love.  But we’re getting off the subject.”

“I’m not sure what the subject was.  But you never answered when I asked _just in case of what_.”

“Just in case I was needed but nobody thought to ask my help.  It’s very rude, you know, asking someone’s name and never offering your own.”

She blinks.  “Um.  I’m Hope.  Hope Summers.”

“Eugh.  Your parents don’t love you much, do they?”

She flushes.  “My parents love me just fine.  Daddy just…occasionally has terrible taste.  And anyway, I came with the ‘Hope’ part.”

He leans close again.  “Hope, parents, plural, sore spot, Daddy, _Summers_.  Ah.  Wade never told me that big moron finally made an honest man of him.  Can you imagine?  One of his oldest acquaintances, and not even invited to the wedding.”

“How did you—”

“I am very good with people, Hope Summers.  They don’t always talk, but I listen.  Also, when you get to be my age, you’ve seen and done pretty much everything, and you remember what it was like.  There’s a certain way that a child talks of the unfavored parent, and a certain way that a child talks of the beloved step-parent.  Be a dear and turn Kali off to cut down on resonant interference—this is a prison break.”

 

**.End.**


	2. Timey-Wimey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope freaks out. The Doctor explains how things work. Hijinks and surprising life lessons ensue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1,717 words; i had it at 1721 and decided i wanted a specific word count, lol....
> 
> any techno-babble should be covered in [The Fateverse Glossary](http://lex-munro.livejournal.com/64465.html) or [The Fateverse Appendix](http://lex-munro.livejournal.com/64565.html).

**Timey-Wimey**

 

“Be a dear and turn Kali off to cut down on resonant interference—this is a prison break.”

“Oh, God!” yelps Hope, nevertheless fumbling to turn Kali off.  “What do you mean, ‘prison break’?  No.  Nononono _no_ , no, I can’t—we can’t—I’ll get fired for this, or, or stuffed in the Fridge, or—”

The Doctor keeps fiddling with dials and switches.  “Nonsense, have us both back in time for tea.  Rather the point of a time machine.”

“But this is still aiding and, and _abetting_ —this totally counts as abetting!  I’m gonna be in such unbelievably deep shit—”

“Yes, yes, _if_ —and here’s the important part— _if_ we make a mistake and things go terribly wrong.”  He flashes her a broad grin.  “Quite aside from which, my dear, you’re a Keeper, and the emergency powers clause allows you to temporarily enlist the help of any inmate you see fit.  Right now, the Network needs me, and so long as you’re along for the ride, we’re not technically violating any rules or regulations.  Yet.”

“Yet!” she squeaks as he yanks a very big lever and the time machine lurches into operation.

“Try to calm down, I find that hysterical repetition is usually followed by hysterical screaming, and that makes me lose my train of thought because I can’t hear myself talking anymore.  Where was I?  Ah.  The Network needs me.  As for your next question, ‘Oh, but Doctor, why would we need you?’ the answer is threefold.  One, my time machine is smarter than yours; two, what we’re about to do is quite illegal and I’m already serving a non-commutable conscious life sentence; and three, I know every single word of Network Law and which ones can be creatively interpreted.”

Hope gapes.  “But if you’re planning to violate Network Law, and I’m supposed to be escorting you, how is that _not_ abetting?”

He waves a hand in complicated spirals.  “Iiiiit’s...more sort of…all right, yes, technically, if you want to be _technical_ , it is the very definition of abetting, _but_.”

“But?”

He puts a hand out to cover her mouth.  “I did just say about the hysterical repetition.  Shush, let me finish talking so I know how we’re going to do this.  But _what_ you’re abetting is the forcible divergence of two non-compliant timelines that have collided intrusively, thereby twanging the elastic of the Timestream back into place with a minimum of horrible snappy pain.  As _I’ll_ be doing all the illegal bits and _you’ll_ be in charge of the heroing bits, _I_ shall get a stern lecture and _you_ shall get at the very least a really smashing party.”  Cautiously, he takes his hand away.

“A stern lecture?!”

He grimaces and tries to cover her mouth again, but she ducks away.

“How can you possibly expect to get away from this with—with—”

At that, he backs away and spreads his hands.  “Because I’m indispensable.  It would be so nice, so relieving, to have a kip in cryo, or to just be erased, but I’m too _useful_.  When things go wrong—and they always, inevitably, go wrong—I’m generally the only one who can offer any explanation.  Something new happens, some delegate comes banging on my door with a computer pad full of timestream data and a great wringing of hands to ask, ‘Please, Doctor, what does this all mean?’”

“And your typical answer is…?”

“Timey-wimey.”

Hope has to sit down.  “I need to sit down now,” she announces, just in case this might cause a problem with the operation of the time machine.  Then she stumbles to what looks like a seat from an automobile and more or less falls onto it.

“I know you’re busy panicking at the moment, but don’t worry—it’ll pass.  Deep breaths, find your happy place or your power animal or whatever they’re using these days, maybe give an ‘om’ or two…I’ll go and put the tea on.”

A little while later, he offers her a mug.  As she reaches for it, he pulls it back.  “Ah—you’re not allergic to mint, are you?  I know some people are.”

“What?”  She blinks at him.  “No.  No, I’m a Hope, we’re not allergic to _anything_.”

“Just thought I’d check.”

She takes the mug and sips.  The tea turns out to be some kind of herbal blend with only a little bit of mint.  “If you’re so indispensible—”

“Why am I in prison instead of working for the Network?”

“That.”

“Well, it’s—hm.  I rather—sort of—meddle.  A bit.  They didn’t want to put me away, but I insisted.  I broke some very big and important Network Laws before there _were_ Network Laws.  Also, I may or may not have risked the annihilation of all sentient life in my universe by allowing my entire race to battle a horrific enemy to their mutual destruction.”

She sips her tea.  “That’s.  Um.”

He grins at her with slightly wild-looking eyes.  “I _know_.”

“That’s awfully—”

“Vague, yeah, but I find getting into specifics only causes unnecessary panic, and I can’t help noticing you’re already rather panicked.”

Hope cocks an eyebrow.  “Vague is _not_ the word I was gonna say.  It wasn’t all that vague.  In fact, it was pretty disturbingly specific.”

He looks affronted.  “What d’you care?  Wasn’t _your_ universe.  Somewhere in all this wibbly-wobbly, there’s a bunch of universes where I didn’t take that risk.  Some of them ended in fire.  I like to think that puts me ahead on the scoreboard.”

“This isn’t a game!  Do you think this is _fun_?”

“What’s the point, if you’re not having fun?” he retorts.  “If you’re going through the motions, if you draw nothing but sorrow and despair from every dismal, depressing moment of every day that all the universes spend spiralling toward their doom, then _what_ is the _point_?”

Hope has no answer.  Chastened, she sips her tea.

“I’m going to tell you a secret; a secret that takes some people thousands of years to learn,” he goes on more gently.  “Every moment of every day that all the universes spend spiralling toward their doom, wonderful people are accomplishing amazing things.  They are transforming their worlds and themselves.  They are touching hearts and touching hands and touching minds.  They are laughing, and they are crying, and sometimes they are doing both at once.  They are breaking their own hearts, and each other’s hearts.  They are falling in love, which is like a little universe itself.  That, Hope Summers, is real magic, and it’s not something that could’ve just happened by chance, not in every single universe ever.  It’s proof of something greater than ourselves and our tiny minds and the grand mass of our accumulated knowledge, and that’s reason enough to smile.”

She feels very young.  She clears her throat a little.  “Y’know, if you prove the existence of God, you negate faith, which is the substance of God.”

He grins at her.  “Lovely man, Douglas Adams…  We can make a stop on the way back, if you like.”

“No.  Thank you.”

The time machine begins to shake rather worryingly, and the Doctor hurries back to the controls to hit a blue button.  “Sorry—blue stabilisers, I always forget.  So much easier with River or Nisa around, they were very good at this.  Not ‘this’ as in ‘breaking out of prison to save some universes,’ ‘this’ as in ‘flying.’”  He pauses, then clarifies, “The TARDIS.  Flying _the TARDIS_.  Not flapping, because that would be silly.  Humans don’t come with wings; something of an unfortunate oversight in the case of the ones who live near cliffs.”

“And we’ll really be able to navigate into an intrusive collision?” Hope asks.

The Doctor scoffs and throws a lever.  “My dear girl, we are _in_ the intrusive collision.  Welcome to the rather disorganised intersection of branches 22808-19 and 22805-660.  This may get a bit tricky, because the moral compasses of several subjects are just about opposite between the two branches.”

“So there’s a good guy version and a bad guy version of most of them here?”

“Yyyyyes,” he hazards.  “Not really.  But mostly.  Only not.  ‘Bad’ and ‘good’ are so dreadfully relative.  Let’s stick with ‘naughty’ and ‘nice.’  Or ‘naughty’ and ‘less naughty’ for some of them.  You might wake Kali and ask her to scan for key subjects…more than likely, the collision will be shifting too much for her to get a good scan, but it’s worth a try.”

“Shifting?” Hope asks.

He blinks at her.  “Do you really not know anything about an intrusive collision?  What _are_ they teaching in schools these days?  These two universes currently exist in exactly the same space.  As the very thin fabric of space-time that keeps them separate flutters about in the cosmic winds, bits and pieces of them are overlapping.  Just taking two steps might pop you through from one world to the other, if you walk through a small disturbance.  The bigger disturbances are a problem—whole buildings shifted from one world to the other, streets rearranged, _mountains moved_.  So you go ahead and talk with Kali, and I’ll run a few quick scans myself.”

While he putters about, fiddling with screens and dials, Hope switches Kali back on (with some minor fumbling, since the Node was designed to be used by Wades).  “Kali, do a chronometric scan and give me a list of the key subjects of this collision.”

_~Scanning.~_

“Finish your tea,” the Doctor admonishes without turning.

Hope drinks her tea as white text begins to scroll, with certain subjects blinking red.  “Well, that’s probably the cause,” she sighs.  “A pair of Bob Reynoldses.  If one of them wishing hard enough is almost as bad as a Wanda, I hate to think what two of them wishing for the same thing could do.”

“Hm.”

“Ooh, but we have two Wades, that should help.”

“Hmm.”

“Ugh, and two Osborns…that guy pisses me off…”

“Hmmm.”

“Aha, and two Reed Richardses.”

Kali beeps.

“Oh.  Uh, a nice Reed and a naughty Reed.  But the naughty geniuses would wanna help anyway, right?  They can’t get anything done with their worlds all gooped up like this, either.”

“Have you ever been to an invisible mansion?”

Hope blinks.  “Uh.  No?”

The Doctor grins at her.  “Me neither.  Let’s go.”

 

**.End.**


	3. A Madman With a Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope and the Doctor arrive inside the non-comp intcol, but before they can fix the collision, they have to find out what caused it. Thanks to Doctor Strange’s crystal ball and the efforts of two Wades, they have the clues they need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2,707 words because i-don’t-know-why.
> 
> Fateverse people and terms described in [The Fateverse Glossary](http://lex-munro.livejournal.com/64465.html) and [The Fateverse Appendix](http://lex-munro.livejournal.com/64565.html).
> 
> notes: 1) the title is a reference to the Doctor’s admonition to Amy in the first episode of Season Five: “I started to think you were maybe just, like, a madman with a box.” “Amy Pond, there’s something you better understand about me, ‘cause it’s important, and one day, your life may depend on it – I am _definitely_ a madman with a box.” 2) the Doctor is confusing the adage “let’s cross that bridge when we come to it” (meaning “let’s deal with the issue if or when it occurs”) with the phrase “burning one’s bridges” (meaning “cutting ties with a friend or ally in a hostile manner”). or perhaps he’s not confusing them at all, just combining them. hard to say, when it comes to him.

**A Madman With a Box**

 

When Hope steps out of the Doctor’s time machine, they’re in a city.  She asks the obvious question.

“Where are we, Doctor?”

“Greenwich Village,” he replies, shutting the door after them and looking around.  “As for when, the old girl said it was early twenty-first century, by earth reckoning.”

“I’d guessed that part,” she says.  “I actually do a lot of work in that period, and it was always one of Wade’s favorites.”

“I can see why; it’s a very springy time.  Takes well to tuning.  Come along, Pond.”

She blinks.  “What?”

He pauses without looking at her.  “I said, ‘come along, Hope,’” he lies.

Hope lets it go, opting instead to follow him down the sidewalk.  As she looks around, she sees things that don’t match up—disjointed buildings, misaligned streets, people holding bewildered conversations with their counterparts.  Sometimes, when she takes her eye off something, it changes before she looks back.

“Here we are,” says the Doctor, stopping at what Hope could have _sworn_ was an empty lot a moment ago.

“But that…” she mumbles, staring up at the mansion.

“I did say about the invisible mansion,” he points out.

“But it’s not invisible.”

“Not _now_ , it isn’t.  Perception filter; try to keep up.”

Hope slowly leans her head to one side.  “It’s like if a Neo-Classical villa and a Georgian mansion had a baby.  An ugly baby.”

“Steady on; that’s someone’s home, that is.”  He hops up the front steps and rings the bell.  “And it’s technically Italianate brownstone.  More in common with Queen Anne than Georgian.  Let’s not mention the Network while we’re here, nor the associated technical jargon.”

“They’re both red and uninitiated, so of course I wouldn’t.”

He raises an eyebrow.  “All right, Miss Crab-apple…”

An Asian man answers the door.

“Wong!” Hope exclaims.  She looks at the Doctor.  “This is where Doctor Strange lives?”

The Doctor raises an eyebrow.  “He is in the phone book, you realise.”

Wong clears his throat pointedly.

“Hello, I’m the Doctor.  _The_ Doctor, _that_ Doctor, the madman with the big blue box.”

“Ah.  The box was expected.  This way.”

And Wong vanishes into the shadowy depths of the mansion.

The Doctor grins.  “All the cool people expect the big blue box.”

“I’d never even seen or heard of it until it showed up behind me and Wade’s constructor spat out a key for it.”

He hesitates.  “Probably for the best; things have a distressing tendency to go rather…squiffy…around me.”

“Rather what?”

“Squiffy.  Crooked.  Askant.  Drunk, if you want to be technical.”

“You’re the one who keeps being technical.”

“You started it.  Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.  To be perfectly blunt, the TARDIS has a tendency to take me where I’m needed, which means things have gone wrong there, and people naturally begin to associate me with things going wrong, and it’s not particularly clear whether I cause the wrongness or the wrongness causes me.”

“Not clear to them, or not clear to you?”

“Yes.”

Wong appears at the Doctor’s elbow.  “Tea in the drawing room.  This way, please.”  And he leads them down the hall.

Doctor Strange is waiting in a very stereotypical wingback chair, sipping fresh tea.  “I expected you a bit sooner, Doctor,” he says.  “What kept you?”

“Oh, you know…”  The Doctor waves a hand through the air.  “Prison.”

Wong unconcernedly serves them tea.

“Hm,” says Strange.  “Well, is it too soon to ask what your plan of action is?”

“We’ll have to start by pinning down the cause of the collis—er, the space-time anomaly.”  
“Unfortunately, the usual brilliant minds are failing utterly at doing so.  Fortunately, some _unusual_ minds are scanning for certain types of particles associated with space-time.  Shall we look in on their progress?”

‘Looking in’ turns out to involve a crystal ball.  The Wades have apparently enlisted the aid of someone who _really_ likes machines, and he’s making uninformative noises over a screen full of scrolling numbers.  He determines that the disturbances propagate along leylines (“Clever little human!” the Doctor praises with a smile), and confirms the presence of some kind of radiation that was last seen on a large scale on M Day.

“There’s a special radiation associated with entropy shockwaves?” Hope asks.

The Doctors look at her with raised eyebrows.  Strange sips his tea.

She wilts slightly.  “Was that a dumb question?”

“Oh, I suppose not,” the Doctor says charitably.  “Not for someone with no background in the physics or chemistry of time theory…  For a layperson, I suppose it’s a logical sort of curiosity.  Massive alterations to the fabric of reality involve a lot of complex subatomic interactions, and the math never comes out right—it can’t, that’s a physical law, just like never having a perfectly efficient machine—so some of the subatomic particles involved get bumped into a slightly different frequency.  When it happens on its own, gradually, the remainder for all that cosmic long division is quite small.  When somebody makes it happen all at once, all those little remainders add up, like the sudden expansion of super-heated air after plasmic discharge, _boom_.  A shockwave.  A shockwave that spreads those out-of-phase remainder particles.  Chronometric entropy.”

“And they’re radioactive?” she asks again, to be sure.

“Non-ionising radiation, not the kind that makes you glow in the dark.  Entropic radiation, which alters the chronometric wavelength of everything it encounters until the vibrations finally equalise.”

Hope is not particularly good with physics, chronometric or otherwise.  Her skill set lies more with what she likes to call pragmatic projectile-based problem-solving.  Nevertheless, she has tried to pay attention when Tony and Reed talk about chronometric theory, and Wade taught her the more hands-on ‘you will need to know this when you grow up’ aspects of it, so she thinks she gets what the Doctor’s saying.  “When unups happen, there’s a big entropy shockwave, and that shockwave makes radiation that we can detect and track.  So we can find out where the shockwave started.”

“Quick learner, this one.  But I did say about the jargon.”

“You started it—and anyway, how can we have a conversation about entropy shockwaves without jargon?  We’d be the three blind men discovering the elephant.”

“It’s all right for me; I’m brilliant.  Anyway, that’s silly, blind men finding an elephant…  They’d think it was a palm tree, or a hippo, or a really strange tentacle monster, unless they were psychic, and then they’d think it was, ‘oh, look at that delicious foliage over there.’  Not very helpful at all.”

“Exactly!  We’ll just do a mem-wipe later.”

“New York,” Doctor Strange interrupts, still gazing into the crystal ball.  “It started somewhere in the city.”

Hope takes Kali out of her pocket.  “Kali, do a local scan to find the epicenter of the shockwave, then match against timestamps to find the source.”

 _~Working,~_ says the Node.

“Drink your tea,” says Strange.

“I just _had_ tea,” Hope says.

“She panics like a champ,” the Doctor adds.

“I just unwittingly assisted in a prison break,” she reminds him crossly.

“Such a grump…”

Kali beeps.  _~There is a 98.8% chance that the sources of the entropy shockwave were subject designate Robert Reynolds MPV119 and subject designate Robert Reynolds MPV119.  Timestamps in both branches match within 75 nanoseconds.~_

Hope blinks.  “That can’t be right.  Kali, there can’t be two different versions of someone with the same numerical designation in two different red-locked colliding timelines that don’t use time travel, that’s _why_ we iterate designations—”

“There can,” says the Doctor.  “He can’t have been _physically_ present in both, but he can be _resonantly_ present.  Just like a Node.  Or a TARDIS.  Or certain extra-dimensional world-eating monsters…best not to think about that one.”

“How would that even work?  If it’s two of him with the same designation, then it’s actually one of him, so would his mind just be receiving all the sensory information from both places?  How would he control his body?  Bodies?  How could he even show up as two Bobs when Kali scanned the catalog on the way in?”

The Doctor seems confused by the idea himself.  “How come you didn’t look at the numbers more closely?” he retorts after a moment.

Hope shakes her head.  “Anyway, how did the MPV Bob get into the FNL branch to cause this in the first place?”

“Very carefully?” the Doctor suggests with an infuriatingly blithe grin.

“I don’t understand how this could happen,” says Strange.  “The Sentry was incarcerated—very _thoroughly_ , at that—and the Void has been very quiet ever since.  It shouldn’t be possible for him to have done this.”

“With that kind of power, it’s not such a stretch,” says the Doctor.  “A strong enough wish, especially if there are things like unstable molecules nearby, atoms start to rearrange, quarks begin to vibrate on a different frequency, a man begins to do and see and _remember_ in two different worlds at the same time, and it drives him from past the brink of insanity to well out of sight of the brink of insanity, and his broken mind tries to snap things back into place by putting him back in a single body, like a pair of magnets in separate containers trying to meet.”

“Holy crap,” says Hope.  “I hope it was a good wish.”

“So,” he continues, holding up an index finger on each side of his face and slowly drawing them closer together.  “One of him at each end, pulling, a trans-dimensional tug-of-war, and with their strength equally matched because they’re the same man in two places, it was the ground that gave way.  Like wet mud, _schlllp_ , splat.  He has deformed reality.  Good intentions, bad intentions, indifferent intentions—with a shockwave this big, in such a crucial location, it doesn’t make much difference to Time.  She only knows she doesn’t like it one bit.”

“Ninety-eight point eight isn’t high enough,” Hope says.  “Wade never re-tuned for less than ninety-nine, and I don’t have any orders to the contrary.”

For a while, the Doctor only looks at her, and his pale eyes seem like moonlit snow, twinkling and secretive and almost magical.  Slowly, he grins.  “Good girl,” he says.  “Let’s go see Bob.”

“They’re not in the same place.  I mean—last time I checked, there was one in each branch.  We’ll have to find an anomaly to cross over at some point.”

“We won’t.  It’s the same man, remember?  Same mind, same designation.  Timeslide him into the TARDIS, and he’ll squish right back together, good as new.”

“We’ll still have to force the timelines to diverge—how do we do that?”

“Patience, please; let’s burn one bridge at a time.  Bob first.”

The words don’t exactly inspire confidence.  Hope purses her lips.  “Kali, can you slide us to the MPV119 in this branch?”

_~Subject lock established.  Local entropy levels are too high for safe slide-based transit.  Use of gravitic conduits is recommended.~_

“Right.”  She looks at the Doctor.  “Or should we take your box, since ‘all the cool people expect the box’?”

He shrugs.  “The old girl does have the added benefit of a library, a swimming pool, a duck pond, and a rather gargantuan and well-stocked wardrobe.  Oh, but then there’s our tall, angry friend…tell me, has anyone seen the Statue of Liberty lately?”

“Why?” says Strange.  “Were you expecting her to have moved?”

“Aha, that would be _silly_ , wouldn’t it,” chuckles the Doctor.  “Don’t pay the idea any mind.  But do try to keep an eye on her any time you happen to pass by.  Just in case.”

With a shake of her head, Hope raises the Node.  “Kali, open the tunnel.”

And, with a brief tingle, they leave Doctor Strange’s mansion behind.

They appear in a dim room, where a large blond man is gazing out the window with sad, unfocused eyes, as though watching something completely different.

“Oh, Bob,” the Doctor sighs.

Bob turns, stares for a moment before his face settles in recognition.  “Doctor.  You’re here because of me, aren’t you?  Because I…broke the world.”

“’Fraid so.”

Bob wrings his hands miserably.  “I didn’t mean to do it.  I mean—this isn’t what I wanted.”

“I’m sure it isn’t.  I’ve met so many of you, across so many universes, and they’re all good men.  But even good men are not immune to heartbreak.”

“I just wanted things to go back to the way they were…to be _right_ again.  For the problems to be fixed, and for people to get along.”

Hope understands the sentiment, but doesn’t let it affect her.  No, that’s not right—it affects her, but dully.  Her empathy toward his situation is eclipsed by her knowledge that he’s endangered billions of lives.  Wade was a firm believer that the road to hell is paved in good intentions, and her father quite visibly never disagreed with him on that point.

The Doctor fidgets and shuffles a bit (Hope sees that his shoes have come untied again).  “I know.  I know, Bob.  But you can’t go back.  No one can.  Even with a time machine, things don’t actually go back…we still remember.”

Bowing his head, Bob is silent for a moment.  “Everything just went so wrong.  Can you blame me for wanting it to be right again?”

“Yes,” says Hope.  “You, of all people, have a responsibility to control your desires.  A universe will only bend so far before something breaks.  Kali, recalculate the chance of Mister Reynolds being an origin of the collision.”

_~Point-of-collision cartography scans complete.  Proximal subject designate Robert Reynolds MPV119 is confirmed with 99.76% accuracy to be an originator of the entropy shockwave.  Ident confirmed.  Confirmation transmitted—orders received.~_

White text scrolls in the reddish depths of the Node, and Hope reads it.

“Robert Reynolds MPV119, you have been found guilty of instigating an intrusive collision of non-compliant timestream branches 22808-19 and 22805-660, the resultant entropy shockwave of which reached a magnitude of seven-point-two on the Wilson-Hammer scale.  This constitutes two charges of unauthorized upstream tuning of the first degree.  These charges and your culpability are not in question.”  She pauses to swallow.  “You are required by law to submit yourself for life-long incarceration in the Null-resonance Detention Facility.  If you resist in any way, you will be erased.  Do you understand the charges and instructions I have put forth?”

“Not exactly.  But I know that this…collision…is very bad.”

The Doctor wags a finger.  “By ‘erased,’ of course, she means ‘killed.’  This is a lenient sentence, probably taking into account your good intentions, because intentions _do_ matter, they matter to _us_.  Altering reality is a big no-no, and to have done it on such a scale, well, she would normally have ended that speech with ‘you are hereby subject to summary re-tuning’ and blasted you to bits.”

“I don’t understand,” says Bob.  “Who made these laws?”

Hope blinks, because she doesn’t actually know.  “It’s Network Law, we’ve always—”

“I did,” says the Doctor.  “I wrote the Fidelis Laws.  Every word.  And I wrote them to stop Time from stopping, to keep universes from collapsing and burning and vanishing, to keep people with your calibre of power from changing things however they like without thinking about how they’re affecting other universes, how they’re _destroying worlds_ by wanting things their own way.  I don’t want you to die, Bob, I don’t want _anyone_ to die, but what you did was selfish and wrong, and it’s endangered quite a lot of people, and I’m _very_ disappointed in you.”

Bob sags like a dejected child.

Hope clears her throat.  “We still have to force the timelines to diverge again.  If you want, I can send you to the Null-res facility now…or you can use the time to say your goodbyes.”

“Aren’t you worried I’ll try to escape?”

“You won’t,” says the Doctor.

“And even if you did,” Hope goes on, “Kali has a subject lock now; no matter where you go, we can follow.  Any place, any world, any universe.”

“What if this passes?” frets Bob.  “What if I go wrong again, in my head?  What if the Void takes over?  What if I destroy everything?”  
The Doctor smiles and pats Bob on the shoulder.  “Let’s burn one bridge at a time, shall we?”

 

**.End.**


	4. When the Wind Stands Fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope and the Doctor force the branches to diverge. Much to his disappointment, this requires very little brilliance and/or running on the part of the Doctor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *much thanks to Moriarty for being my physics consultant. you should have seen this thing before the appropriate technobabble was inserted, lol…
> 
> notes: 1) title comes from a River Song quote: "Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair, and the Doctor comes to call…everybody lives.“ 2) the second Doctor played the recorder while thinking. 3) people with psychic ability (or sufficient psychic training) perceive psychic paper as being blank (which is usually inconvenient for the Doctor). 4) "delicious, magical science” comes from an episode of DBZ Abridged.
> 
> visit [The Fateverse Glossary](http://lex-munro.livejournal.com/64465.html) for terms and concepts, and [The Fateverse Appendix](http://lex-munro.livejournal.com/64565.html) for Nodes, branches, and important people.
> 
> p.s. 'Princess Fifi' is part of a running gag with Auditor!Hope: she has a nametag over one boob that says 'Summers,' and Wades ask what the name of her other boob is frequently enough that she's come up with a smartass reply.

**When the Wind Stands Fair**

 

Hope and the Doctor walk into chaos.

Not literal chaos.  Not even anthropomorphized chaos.

They walk into the plain old lots-of-people-are-shouting-because-they-don’t-really-know-what-to-do kind of chaos.

There’s a Victor von Doom who looks decidedly retired from evil-doing (if he was ever evil in his branch) consulting with a Reed Richards via telepresence.  There’s an Otto Octavius arguing with a Hank Pym while a Bruce Banner sighs and massages his temples.  A Forge and a Tinkerer are talking animatedly about something while another Forge sits quietly beside them and builds something.

And, in the middle of it all, a pair of Wades are standing with a Fixer, telling a rather Presidential Norman Osborn what’s what.

“Don’t you just love politics?” says the Doctor.  “Or is this stock trading?  I can’t tell the difference.”

“So, what exactly are we going to do?” she asks him, surveying the madness of SHIELD and HAMMER aides tripping over each other to make calls and fetch coffees and mark things down on a huge map of the country.

“We need a way to force a branch divergence.  We have, at the moment, three options.  Option one, we find a subject with extremely high entropy and messily explode him at the point of collision, which would be bad.  Option two, we detonate a large and somewhat modified nuclear weapon at the point of collision, blowing a sizeable portion of each branch to smithereens, which would be bad.  Option three, I do something brilliant and save the day without all that, which would be un-bad.”

Hope looks at him sidelong.  “And what exactly do you need in order to do your ‘something brilliant’?”

He raises his eyebrows.  “A better idea.”

She glares.

He offers a little grin.  “I _know_.”

“Well—keep talking, then.  That’s how you do it, right?”

“Usually yes, sometimes no.  I haven’t tried the recorder this time ‘round.  Ooh, or maybe nail-biting.”

“Focus, Doctor!  Why would blowing things up separate the branches?”

“Well, provided I simultaneously sent out a quantum phase pulse from the TARDIS, the resonance shockwave resulting from the violent death of a high-entropy subject would literally shake the worlds apart.  As for the other, well, that would be an entropy-magnetic implosion, sucking up the rogue time-particles until the collision undid itself, but the nuclear bomb necessary to power the implosion would still have gone off.”

Hope watches Dr. Pym slug Dr. Octavius just before Bruce can pull him back and urge him to calm down.  “So we need a resonance shockwave—which I didn’t know was a thing—or an implosion that sucks up entropy?”

He grimaces in a way that tells her she’s offered a painful oversimplification.

“Close enough!” she says impatiently.

“Technically, we need a propagating isochronometric shockwave or the forced static implosion of apochronophilic particles, both of which involve what are technically really confused bosons.”

It’s the last straw.  Hope grips him by the shoulders and shakes him rather vigorously.  “You and your technicalities!”

The room happened to have fallen into a coincidental sort of hush—the kind of resounding silence where everyone’s taking a drink or catching a breath—right when she was nearly shouting in frustration.

Because that’s what Hope’s luck is like.

Everyone is looking at her.

“Uh,” she says.

“What’s the name of the other one?” asks one of the Wades (the other Wade hits him and hisses that it’s not polite to ask a girl that kind of question without buying her a drink).

The Doctor climbs up on someone’s chair and holds up a badge that Hope doesn’t get a good look at.  “Hi, ‘scuse us.  I’m the man from the place with the thing, here to fix your stuff.”

“What the hell’s a ‘timey-wimey repairman’?” says someone.

“Why are you showing us a blank piece of paper, weirdo?” says someone else.

The Doctor frowns at his badge before shoving it into a pocket.  “Okay, forget that part.  Can anyone here make bosons?  I would also settle for isochronometric proj—ah, dimensiony-doorway-making-thingies.”

 _~“Yes,”~_ says Reed on the monitor, just as Dr. Octavius says, “We confiscated one a few years back,” and one of the Forges says, “Yeah, Stark can make bosons all day long.”

This seems to catch the Doctor off-guard.  “Oh,” he says, blinking.  “Oh, well that makes things…rather disappointingly simple, actually.  I was sort of hoping for dashing heroics.  I’ve been…I don’t get out much.”

“We can tell,” somebody mutters.

“And who exactly _are_ you?” asks Osborn.

The Doctor pouts slightly and wiggles his toes (which alerts Hope to the fact that he’s lost his shoes somewhere along the way); he’s still up on the chair.  “Well.  I’m _the Doctor_.  Could I just get you all to fetch the necessary equipment to point a stream of bosons at whatever dimensional-gateway device you confiscated?  I should be able to do the rest with a quick bit of sonicking.  Is there anything else I can do, anything you need done?  I can give you the teaser on the cure for world hunger.  Or the Cliff’s Notes to what ends up being Einstein’s Theory of Everything.  I also do a rather good scone, if that’s of any interest.  What about cabinets?  I can hang quite a lot of cabinets very quickly.  No?”

“Wait, wait, _wait_ ,” says a Wade (the one who was punched for asking about Princess Fifi).  “Dude, you _can’t_ be the Doctor, because he’s not real.  He’s totally made up.”

“He’s as real as you ‘n me,” says the other Wade.

“I have got my screwdriver, if that helps you decide,” the Doctor offers, holding up some sort of wand-like tool that looks more like a sonic scanner than any screwdriver Hope’s ever seen.

They turn their backs and hold a hushed argument.

“Holy shit, you’re right!” Rude Wade exclaims.

Very slowly, they turn to face the Doctor again.  “Can we have your autograph?” they ask in synch.

“Er…perhaps later?” the Doctor hazards.

Osborn huffs a sigh and puts his hands on his hips.  “Look, you can discuss whatever wild idea this is with doctors Doom and Octavius—they’re the gentlemen in charge of Richards’ gateway device.  If they decide your suggestion has merit, we’ll talk further, Dr. Whoever-You-Are.”

Dr. Doom sighs heavily from the communication terminal.  “Shall we call you back, Dr. Richards, or would you like to listen in?”

There’s a sound of a small scuffle on the other end, and Hope sees a Tony Stark shove his way into view.  _~“We’ll listen.  Maybe whatever gets done over there can be aided by us doing something similar over here.  The sooner we get Norman goddamn Osborn back in jail, the better.”~_

“No offense taken,” says the important-looking Osborn standing beside the Fixer (who has paused in his explanations).

_~“That’s a shame, because I totally meant to offend you and every other version of you in every universe ever.”~_

“Oh, how childish,” Osborn mutters, and turns to put his back to the monitor.  “Please continue, Mr. Ebersol.”

“Get down from there,” Octavius admonishes the Doctor.  “I’m not talking to you while you’re up there.”

The Doctor rolls his eyes and hops down from the chair.  “All right, Mr. Gloomy.”

The three geniuses gather around the communication terminal and subside into technobabble.  Hope keeps her distance, lest she be tempted to _strangle_ the Doctor.

“Hi, can I get you anything?  Coffee?  Tea?”

“I’ve had it up to _here_ with tea,” she snaps.  Sighing, she half-turns.  “Sorry, Ha—Dr. Pym.”

He doesn’t look particularly put off.  Apparently they’ve stumbled across one of the subject types she dreads:  Single, Persistent, and Far Too Interested Hank.  “I’m sure you’ve had a very trying day.  But you have me at something of a disadvantage—you know me, but I’d remember meeting you, Miss…?”

She frowns thinly at him.  “Summers.  It says so right where I know you’ve looked, because almost everyone does, _especially_ straight men.  And I’m a _minor_.  And I’m not interested, thanks.”

“Oh, come now, there’s no harm in a little—”

“Hank, I can and will break every bone in your hand if you don’t stop trying to flirt with me.  I’d be grateful for a coffee, though—blond but not sweet.”

At this point, Hope takes the opportunity to slip away and see how the Doctor’s doing.

“—turned into a sort of _rak’laq_.  Sorry, that’s a metaphor; you don’t have a word for it.  Uh.  The leftover bits when a really happy lepton meets a really angry gluon.  Like I said, a reeeeally confused boson.”

On the monitor, Reed’s face lights up with sudden understanding.  _~“You mean a positronic Higgs collision!”~_

“Yes, exactly.  Only not at all.”

“It can’t be both yes and no,” Dr. Octavius says impatiently.  “He’s either right or he isn’t.”

The Doctor offers a patronizing smile.  “That’s like saying a quark can only be up or down.  I’m going to assume that you fellows only think in terms of sixteen basic particles—the usual fermions and bosons, yes?”

Doom leans closer.  “You use more?” he asks in a hungry tone.

“Well, there’s a reason the twentieth-century ‘Standard Model’ of particle physics is a ‘theory of _almost_ everything,’” the Doctor replies with a shrug.  “You don’t think in terms of resonance, so you think there’s only one flavour of Higgs boson.  You don’t know about time particles, the bits that generate what my race called ‘Vortex energy.’  A whole set of bosons that do some truly remarkable things in matter-antimatter collisions.  I’m actually surprised you still think photons are weird for being waves and particles at the same time.  I mean, it’s like you don’t know that photons are really slow-moving chronitons, or that the individual quantum signature of every so-called ‘dimension’ can be uniquely identified by the activity patterns of its various chroniton flavours.”

 _~“Amazing!”~_ Reed says.

“Doctor, stop that,” Hope chides.  “I don’t wanna mem-wipe everybody here—it’ll take me _weeks_ to do all the paperwork.”

“Sorry, right, I just get a tad overenthusiastic at times.  Gentlemen, what I need from you is a gateway device tuned to the world it is _not_ currently in, creating a conduit between the two quantum presences so that—”

“Focus.  Essential info only.”

He blinks, pouts at her.  “And then we point a stream of stuff at the thing, springing your two worlds apart.  Not quite as neat as an apochronophilic implosion, but it has the added bonus of not requiring, you know, _a big stonking implosion_.”

“And what flavor of chroniton will you be beaming at the gateway device?” Doom wants to know.

“Technically, what we’re doing is injecting a gravimetric conduit with an isochronometric beam, which would obviously be made of—”  He breaks off when he catches Hope’s stern look.  “We’ll be injecting it with science.  Delicious, magical science.  Via sonic screwdriver.”

It takes ten minutes to set up the equipment; Hope drinks a cup of coffee and occasionally pinches the Doctor when he’s about to stray into scientific tangents.

It takes ten _seconds_ to point the screwdriver at the particle generator (with an intriguing little humming noise) and adjust its beam.

What happens next feels a great deal like passing through a gravitic conduit—tingly and effervescent.  Then Hope and the Doctor are standing next to Bob (which is slightly worrying at the best of times).

“Bob, what did you just do?” the Doctor asks him.

“Nothing much.  And it was helpful.  I’m sure I did it right this time.”

The Doctor beckons to Hope.  “Kali, slide us into the TARDIS, please.”

Hope jumps a bit when her pocket talks.  _~Initiating flatscale timeslide.~_

Bob stares at his hands when they arrive in the amber-lit control room.  “I’m—I think I’m all better.  Together, I mean.  Not…split.”

“That’s right,” the Doctor confirms, starting to twiddle dials as he stares at a screen.  “Looks like the branches diverged properly, but the locus has caused some echoes.  Kali, if you would be so kind as to compare the current combined subject catalogue with your earlier scan and alert us to any discrepancies…?”

Hope takes the red sphere from her pocket and watches as red entries appear one by one.

_~Thirty-one instances of Class A discrepancies found, 16 Class C discrepancies found, and 122 Class F discrepancies found.  No appreciable reduction in overall stability detected.~_

“So people have been added, and people have been changed, but nobody’s been taken away,” says the Doctor, smiling hugely.  “Everybody lives.  Well done, Bob.”

“I couldn’t give _everybody_ a happy ending,” Bob argues with a shake of his head.  “But I did try to get as many as I could.”

“Come along, then—time to go to Jail without passing Go.”

“Without passing what?” Hope says.

Bob gapes at her.  “You’ve never played Monopoly?”

“You can play with monopolies?”

The Doctor holds out a large flat box.  “I’ve got the Star Wars edition!  Set Kali down on the console just there, and we can teach both ladies at once.”

 

**.End.**


	5. Misplaced

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack Carter discovers that the Founder has disappeared on his watch. Fortunately, Hope brings the madman home (without his box).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes: 1) by TA i mean 'transparent aluminum.' 2) Donovan is from BBC's "Sherlock." she likes to assume the worst of people. 3) jumja sticks are a Bajoran sweet. 4) the complaining Sherlock is from CBS's "Elementary," and his Watson is played by the gorgeous Lucy Liu. 5) this Rose Tyler managed to survive keeping a large portion of the Time Vortex energy, and became a Time Lady. her Doctor abandoned her as a result, and she ran off to do horribly illegal things that got her arrested by the Network. 6) if you're curious, the four words the Founder once used to make Jack Harkness fall in love with him were, "There you are, sweetheart..." (in one of [my scrapped Doctor Who fics](http://lex-munro.tumblr.com/post/26562546579)). the four words that he used to make a different Jack Harkness follow him were, "I need you, Jack" (from [Follow](http://lex-munro.tumblr.com/post/37815164497)).

**Misplaced**

 

Jack Carter wakes to an unfamiliar alarm coming from his portable.  His chron reads 0441, and he mutters some foul words as he snatches the blaring little rectangle of TA from his bedside table.

The alarm pauses briefly as the portable flashes green, then resumes.

Inmate unaccounted for.

“What?” he says, blinking.

Not ‘inmate escaped,’ not ‘inmate requires immediate medical care.’  He’s dealt with those before.

“They’re all behind null-locks—how can he be not there but not escaped?”

He presses his thumb to the screen for more information (the alarm finally goes quiet).

Emergency – Inmate 001 unaccounted for.  Chronometric signature not present in bundle.  All null-locks intact, no unauthorized slide or conduit activity detected.

He stares at the number, but his brain is still mostly asleep.

“Zero-zero-one, that sounds so famil— _shit_!”

It takes him less than five minutes to throw on his uniform and sprint down to the Warder station to check on the situation.

“Tell me I read this wrong,” he begs as he walks in the door.  “Tell me this doesn’t say that we’ve _lost track_ of the frigging _Network Founder_.”

“You’ve read it right,” says Donovan, and he can’t help being reminded of Lupo when she stands like that with her arms crossed and a frown on her face.  “That’s egzackly what it says.”

“How did we manage to misplace one of the most important men in the multiverse?”

She shrugs, and that’s not at all like Lupo—Sally Donovan has a crippling lack of imagination and a terminal lack of curiosity.  “Somebody busted him out and faked up the logs?” she guesses.

“No, there’s too many people at all the checkpoints to fake the vids, only one way in or out, and you can’t fool the slide sensors.”

“They are a bit slow, though,” she points out.  “That Hunter guy, his team popped right in, and it was five minutes before anybody but the Auditor knew.  Hence, dead Auditor.”

“It’s been more than five minutes.”

She shrugs again.  “Massive conspiracy?  Only other thing we know is the lads two down says they heard a funny sort of whooshing noise, then they heard him talking to himself as usual, and then they heard the noise again.  The deaf-mute has a look like he knows what’s up, but damned if you’ll get him to rat on the old man.”

“He’s _not_ —” Jack starts to say, but swallows it.  Donovan knows damn well that Harkness isn’t deaf _or_ mute, and if she cared to ask (or listen when it’s being explained to her for the millionth time by someone who can be bothered to give half a shit about their inmates) she’d know exactly why that particular version of Jack Harkness sits quietly in his room and pretends not to exist.  She can’t be completely ignorant, though, or she wouldn’t know that there’s no force in any universe that could make their quiet Harkness give up info about the Founder unless he thought the man’s life was at stake.

Instead, Jack sighs and says, “What the hell am I gonna tell Hand?”

“The truth:  we dunno how he did it or who his accomplices were, and nobody was smart enough to tag him, so he could be bloody anywhere by now.  Anyway, getting ‘em back ain’t our department.”

Again, a jarring dissimilarity to Lupo—Donovan assumes all their inmates are scheming trash and should be treated as such, despite the overwhelming evidence that the farthest any of the min-sec inmates would go if released would be to another cell to bicker with their fellow inmates.  She doesn’t seem capable of understanding that min-sec here is more like a nursing home than a prison.

“Assuming he was responsible and that he wasn’t, oh, _kidnapped_ or something equally horrible and disastrous,” Jack says sharply.  “And telling her we don’t know?  That’s suicide.  There’s no way I’m saying that.”

Ten minutes later, he’s standing at attention.

“Well?” the Head Warder prompts with an eloquent raise of one eyebrow.

“We don’t know how it was done, how many people were involved, or his current whereabouts.”

“Need I remind you that the inmate in question authored our entire way of life?”

“No, ma’am.”

“The Founder is not just another inmate.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Without him, the Network wouldn’t exist, and Network Law wouldn’t exist, and you and I wouldn’t have jobs.”

“Well, actually, I’d probably still b—”  At her withering glance, he looks at his feet.  “No, ma’am.”

“Can you tell me how it’s possible for the most precious man in the multiverse to simply _vanish_ from his cell with no one the wiser?”

“I’m not a Theorist, ma’am.  All we know is that his neighbors heard some kind of mechanical whooshing noise, and he said something to someone, and then there was the same whooshing noise again.  Catalog scans from the Core say that’s when he left our branch—but without any signs of conduits or slides, we have no way of knowing where or when he was headed.  Since he’s not an employee, he was never tagged, so we’d only be able to find him with a streamwide scan, and none of the Nodes can do that quickly, especially with some of the anomalies we currently have in the GB.”

Victoria paces fitfully, hands clenched at the small of her back.  “As Senior Warder of the facility, his safety is entirely your responsibility.”

“Yes, ma’am.  We’re all worried for him, ma’am, but we’re Warders—this is a job for Keepers.”

With perfect timing (because the multiverse has a sense of humor), an alarm buzzes three times.  The Auditor has arrived with one or more inmates.

“Let’s go ask a Keeper, then,” says Victoria, all but storming her way out of Jack’s office and down the corridor.

Jack relaxes his spine for a moment, briefly prays that Hope has managed to find the Founder, and jogs to catch up with his boss.

In the command center, a knot of the usual people are crowded around.  Somewhere in the middle, Jack can hear the Founder’s voice.

“Aaand one for you, and one for you—have I missed anyone?  Is Mister Carter here yet?”

“Where have you _been_?!” Victoria shouts, and the mess of people takes a collective three steps back.

Hope is standing with the Founder, holding a tray of what look like popsicles or really big lollipops.

“Victoria!” says the Founder.  “How lovely to see you.  Sorry we’re late; made a bit of a pit stop.  D’you like Jumja sticks?  I brought plenty for everyone.  This is Bob; he’ll be staying with us for the next...however long he lives.  But he’s a good lad, so I think with a soothing atmosphere and some friends to chat with, he’ll be fine in minimum security.”

“None of that answers the question.”

“Jumja stick, Mister Carter?”

He accepts it with a smile—it’s only polite, after all.  A reflexive lick shows the thing to be good, but _very_ sweet.

The Founder gestures to Hope.  “The Auditor very wisely thought to enlist my aid in untangling that little intrusive collision problem.  That’s where we were.  Bob here was responsible—but he didn’t mean any harm, and it’s all been set right.  So.  A specially-calibrated suppression collar, life in minimum security, collision diverged, stability restored.  Very nicely done, Hope!”  He pats her on the back.

Jack recognizes the look on her face as one of _I didn’t actually do it, but we agreed I’d take the credit_.  “Oh, good,” he says.  “Everything worked out, no harm done.  Great.  Just, uh, y’know.  Let us know next time you’re gonna conscript the originator of modern multiverse civilization.”

She scowls at the Founder.

“That’s an exaggeration,” the man dismisses with a flap of his hand.  “I only organised certain things and authored a set of guidelines; technically, the Network’s civilisation basis comes from the major Arienite societies, in particular the—”

“Sir, I need to get you back to your cell,” Jack interrupts gently.  “And then the Auditor will have to submit to debriefing, since she didn’t give us a heads-up before your little jaunt.”

The Founder fidgets slightly and looks chastened.  “Of course, I’m delaying important business, terribly sorry.”

“That’s okay, sir,” he assures the man, corralling him toward the Fridge.  “You’ve lost your shoes _again_?”

“My toes were crying for freedom; I couldn’t hear myself think.  Victoria looks very put out.”

“She was very worried, sir.  We all were.  She’ll forgive you eventually.”

“Hope.”

“Right.  She’ll forgive the Auditor.  Because a teenage girl with almost no experience in the more obscure aspects of her new job would know how to get in and out of here from the Core without using either one of the Network’s major transit types, and would _certainly_ know that she could temporarily conscript an inmate by use of one of the lesser-known emergency powers granted to Keepers.”

The Founder has the manners to look a little sheepish.  “It’s my TARDIS…she’s always been rather…assertive.  Gotten me into a lot of trouble.”  He pauses as they pass into the null-lock, and admits, “Gotten me _out_ of a lot of trouble.”

Jack says nothing while he waits for them both to be scanned through.  He has to verify the scan when it reads that the Founder is entering without being on record as ever leaving.

“The entropy shockwave was strong enough to wake her up, so she came to get me.  She’s not like other TARDISes, even of the same type—not that you or the Network would know much about those—because she’s mine, and I’ve seen all of Time.  Frontways, backways, sideways.  Inside-outways.”

When the inner seal of the lock finally opens, Jack has to once more physically herd the Founder along.

“So she can do what no other TARDIS knows how to do—she can slip her way along any little eddy of the timestream, no matter how faint or how turbulent, with barely a ripple.  That’s what happens when your method of vortex travel—sorry, stream transit—is based on aggregate chronitonic phase conversion instead of simplified chronometric matter remodulation and is operated via a sentient control system.  She has a fine and experienced touch with navigation, see, and that lets her work her way into anomalies like intrusive collisions without any upsetting side-effects.”

Jack lets the Founder ramble for the rest of the walk; the poor guy doesn’t often see the kind of excitement they must’ve gotten into while untangling an intrusive collision.

“Will you keep it down out there?” one of the Sherlocks says testily.  “Some of us are trying to sleep, the better to maintain alertness and focus while contemplating rather grander things than gallivanting about the universes in some clunky old box.”

“Keep walking, sir,” Jack encourages.

But, of course, the Founder has to pause.  A man’s ship is his pride, or something like that.  “She is _not_ clunky,” he asserts, jabbing a finger at the darkened room and the blanket-bundled lump that cast aspersions on his time machine.  “And where I come from, _you_ are nothing more than a fictional character, so contemplate _that_.”

Jack grasps him by the shoulders and carefully turns him around the way one would a beloved but embarrassing grandfather.  “Sir, please.”

“You can’t see it, but I’m playing a violin,” the Sherlock calls after them.  “World’s tiniest.  You’ve broken my heart, truly.  Shattered all my illusions.  Worse than Watson, and at least she was pretty.”

And from farther down the corridor, a Tony shouts, “Holmes, if you don’t shut up, I’ll come over there and shatter your _skull_!”

A chorus of sleepy agreement bubbles up from the surrounding cells.

When they start to get closer to what Jack thinks of as ‘the torture chamber,’ some of the various loathers are awake and waiting.  They heckle and jeer.  They call out things like ‘off to ruin someone else’s life, were you?’ and ‘let any alien drug dealers run off with a planet’s children lately?’ and ‘you really can’t just leave well enough alone, can you?’

As always, Rose is the one with the worst things to say.  She’s the only Rose they have, and Jack’s glad for that, if her counterparts are anything like her.

“So, who’d you leave for dead this time?” she asks sweetly.

The Founder pauses again.  “Everybody lived, Rose.”

“Oh, good on you.  Don’t bring him back to life, though, does it?  _I_ did that.”

“You think I can’t tell you apart, but you’re _wrong_ ,” the Founder tells her in a quiet voice.  “I know you apart from every other Rose Tyler in every universe.  I know which one you are.  And you couldn’t stand Jack, even before the first time he died.”

She flinches, and her glare becomes a pout.  “Yeah,” she admits.  “But _you_ loved him.  You loved him, so I gave him back to you.  Don’t that mean anything?”

“It means _everything_ ,” he assures her.

She snorts.  “You never did so much as thank me, either.”

“Because what you did damaged Time.  A _lot_ of things you did damaged Time.  You could’ve brought whole universes crashing down.  Do you honestly imagine I’d thank you for that?”

She hammers a fist against the wall beside her.  “Don’t you lie, Doctor; not this time.  If somebody had a way to give him back to you, safe and sound, you’d move every heaven out there.”

He steps up close, until they’re nose-to-nose, separated only by the not-quite-visible barrier of the nullres field.  “I could have him back right now without moving a single one, because I know where to go, and I know the four words that will make Jack Harkness fall in love with me, and I know four more that will make him follow me anywhere.  But I changed things, and now I’m being punished, and I accept that.  So I’ll sit in my room right next to a Jack who once married me, and read a mountain of letters that make me miss him.”

After a moment, Rose steps back.  “God, you really do hate yourself, don’t you?  You’re absolutely starkers.”

“Sir,” Jack coaxes.  “We should get you home.”

“Quite right, Mister Carter,” the Founder murmurs.

“Here we are,” Jack sighs when they finally get to the Founder’s cell.  He inputs the unlock code and sits through the verification scans, and a section of the nullres field drops.

“Home sweet home,” the Founder says drearily as he walks in.  There’s a lamp on beside a patched armchair, and he cuts a very lonely figure silhouetted against its light.

Jack clears his throat.  “Is there anything you need before I go debrief the Auditor, sir?”

“Could you just—it would be nice if—she’ll take care of herself, of course—my TARDIS, I mean—but please make sure Hope remembers to put the key back where she found it.  Just in case.”

“Of course, sir.  Good night.”

The Founder turns quickly.  “I’m sorry to have woken you, Mister Carter.”

Jack sighs again.  “Sir— _Doctor_.  It’s okay, really.  We were just worried.  It’s good to have you back.”

After a moment of awkward fidgeting, the Founder nods.  “Good night, Mister Carter.”

“Good night, sir,” Jack repeats, and locks the cell.

 

**.End.**


	6. Home Again, Home Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Founder's TARDIS goes home to the Collector's Grotto, waiting for the next time she's needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jiggety-jig. i didn’t like just leaving the Founder’s TARDIS unattended, and i figured there was no way that she actually just stayed camped out on that hilltop where he left her when Loki took him to the Fridge (in [Ripples](http://archiveofourown.org/works/446717/chapters/771930)).
> 
> so. hey, look, the Collector! and silliness. and Oswin (pre-Danny!Clara, anyway), because she’s far too cute to not crop up in the Fateverse. i think she’d really enjoy hanging out at the Junk Heap.
> 
> AU/multiverse, crossovers, sort-of-rule-63 (because Dory’s a shapeshifter and could be Teddy if she felt like it…and now i have a sudden urge to write Billy/Teddy as a lesbian couple, just because the Fateverse has them in every other gender arrangement…).
> 
> visit [The Fateverse Glossary](http://lex-munro.livejournal.com/64465.html) for terms and concepts, and [The Fateverse Appendix](http://lex-munro.livejournal.com/64565.html) for Nodes, branches, and important people.

**Home Again, Home Again**

 

Dory is humming a pop song as she dusts the snowglobes.  Lately, there’s been some noise on Will’s portable about intcols and a missing inmate, but the numbers were all so far away that she just marked the notices ‘read’ for him and moved on.  How often does an intcol several secondary trunks away have anything to do with them, after all?

Behind her, she can hear Will up on his ladder, fussing at the chandelier of windchimes—a susurrus of metallic notes with the occasional bell-like burst and an undercurrent of muttering.

“Need me to get something, honey?” she offers, knowing he’ll turn it down.

“No, I’ve—come here, you little—I’ve got it.”

She nods to herself.  “Whatcha up to?”

“One of them was hanging wrong.  If it’s hanging wrong, then this whole quadrant is off by thirteen millimeters.  Thirteen!  She’ll be back any moment now, and she could end up thirteen millimeters out of place, and then we’ll really be in trouble, because I sure as hell can’t move her, and I don’t think you could, either.”

Dory pauses.  “She?”

Will breathes out an impatient puff of air.  “The missing Type Forty,” he says.  “She’s…I think NC902.  Let me just…”

Ah, a Type 40 TARDIS.  Dory learned her lesson about trying to move TARDISes from the outside after she pulled a hamstring the one and only time she tried.  It’s like picking up a lead brick painted to look like styrofoam—at first glance, oh, it can’t be _that_ heavy; but _yes, it really, really is_.  Much smarter to just go in and pilot the thing a few feet over (or ask nicely, since some of them can move on their own).

She turns to see him leaning precariously on the ladder to get better light on his portable.

“Yes.  Yeah.  Idris Blue NC902.  Isn’t it weird that only three of them had names before the Keepers catalogued them?  Who gets in a ship that hasn’t got a name?  That’s bad luck, right?”

“Yes, dear.  Please get down from there before you fall and break your neck.”

He reaches up to turn a butterfly-shaped clapper in the thicket of chimes, and _there_.

Some ten feet away, in a shadowed corner, a collection of six big blue police boxes has become _seven_.

“There you are,” Will sighs happily, scrambling down from the ladder and pulling a rag out of his pocket to wipe at the windows of the prodigal box.  “Old, and new, and borrowed, and the _bluest_ blue.  All the cool people expect the box.  You’ll know when they need you again—for now, have a good nap.”  And he pats it ( _her_ ; ships are female, after all) and crouches to check the measurements.

Dory folds up the forgotten ladder to prevent accidents (Will has run into ladders and step-stools fourteen times this year), and has just stowed it aside when there’s a hollow wooden noise and a yelp from Will’s direction.

“Ooh—sorry!” says a young woman (Dory turns with a shocked frown).  “What on earth were you doing down there?”

“Measuring,” grunts Will as the woman (who is adorable in a way that makes Dory want to bake cookies) helps him to his feet.  “Who are you?”

“Clara.  And, er…where exactly is this?”

Will gapes.  “You don’t know?”  He swats the TARDIS with his rag.  “A stray, really?  You’re picking up bad habits!”

Dory pounces on Clara and steers her away from Will just as he starts up a one-sided argument with a time machine.  “Hi, Clara, I’m Dory, Will’s wife.  Would you like some tea and cookies?”

“Oh—cheers,” Clara says with a grin.

 

**.End.**


End file.
